She knows how U.S. Olympians pop onto our TVs and mobile devices every four years. They have flags wrapped around them, corporate logos stamped upon them. They win or they lose and then disappear, into the deep cellar of recovery and restoration, until we meet them again. That’s why the crowds seem to move them so much, to tears and to laughter and to new personal standards. They only hear them during years ending in zero, or divisible by four.

While we were watching, Kim Rhode was winning an Olympic medal for the fifth consecutive Olympics, the first U.S. athlete to do that in an individual sport. In her case, it’s shooting. And in this case, it was one of her three golds. Recently in Tiller, Ark., Rhode qualified for the 2016 team, and thus will become the first America to compete In Olympics on five continents.

While we weren’t watching, Rhode went through blasts of ecstasy and dread that we associate with everyday people. She is one.

Rhode returned to Pomona after the 2012 games and began helping a friend with a wedding. Another friend was recounting all the things you feel when you’re pregnant.

“I listened and started going, check, check, check,” Rhode said. “At that moment I thought I was going through that tired phase.”

Turned out she was pregnant indeed. Unbeknownst to her, she was pregnant in London.

The good news that son Carter Harryman was born on May 15, 2013 and was, and is, fine. “He’s quite the little character,” Rhode said.

Not until February 2016 was Rhode cleared to walk more than one block. At the four-month mark of her pregnancy she was bedridden. Six weeks after Carter was born, she had her gallbladder removed.

“I had the whole handicapped placard and everything,” she said. “I struggled very much to walk. Bones, nerve damage, other things that are more personal. My son is perfectly healthy. Unfortunately, I can’t chase him around.”

For a long time Rhode was told not to lift anything heavier than five pounds. Her Baretta weighs nine pounds. It took her several months after Carter was born to pick up a gun.

“I was averaging 1,000 rounds before all that,” Rhode said. “Then it became hard for me to get to 200 targets. I was at about 700 in March. I’m getting there. I walk a little bit and then I have to go sit down. I struggle with stairs. I’m not close to 100 percent. Everyone has different experiences with being a mom. Mine was not the norm.”

Neither is her career. In London, Rhode won her third gold, after another traumatic interval. She had a lumpectomy, and the gun she’d used to win her previous medals was stolen out of her car at an outlet mall, as she and Mike Harryman were planning their wedding.

Rhode has won five World Cups, a World Championship and a Pan-American Games. She is famous for blocking out things, to the bemusement of her husband, who said in London that he often has “to poke her with a stick.”

She says conditioning is a challenge. “We’re definitely not running,” she said. “Shooters don’t run. But we do a lot of drilling and repeition. There are things that go, like the arms and the eyes.

“It’s one of the sports with longevity. Oscar Schwan of Sweden was in the Olympics when he’s 72. I’m halfway there.”

Schwan, in fact, is the oldest gold medalist in Olympic history, winning when he was 64 at the Stockholm Olympics of 1912. Age can be a weapon, especially victorious age.

“A lot of people might know deep down that they’re not ready, that they might have a fear deep down that they’re sweeping under the rug.,” she said. “For me that’s my biggest thing, identifying what that is, systemically going in there and eliminating it.”

And then the trap door will open and Rhode will disappear again, working on her 18 classic automobiles, including a 1929 Model A pickup truck. She will also be seeking out first edition children’s books. She says her favorite is the Wizard of Oz, which is actually 150 books.

“There was a special Beatrix Potter book in London,” Rhode said. “Maybe there’s something in Rio I can’t live without.”